Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the Swedish Symbiocity solution to sustainable urban planning. It charts the genesis of the concept and the consequences of a mobile digital solution in terms if the loss of ‘local’ knowledge and experience in ‘universal’ solutions to ‘universal’ environmental problems.

Paper long abstract:

Urban planning that intends to tackle environmental challenges has morphed into mobile concepts and ideas in digital form that are communicated via the Internet as packages available for purchase by interested parties. This paper looks at one such package, the Swedish Symbiocity solution to sustainable urban planning. It charts the genesis of the concept and examines how its original status as planning in situ became a concept that can be marketed globally. The paper situates this and similar planning solutions within a world increasingly framed as 'the Anthropocene' and asks what are the consequences of such packages, including the possible loss of 'local' knowledge and experience in favour of solutions that appeal to a universal humanity facing universal problems. It interrogates the profit motive and national aspirations beyond such concepts, which are portrayed as beyond national economic interests, but also asks what alternatives exist in a world that, despite the appeals to the universal, is still heavily marked by national interests and agendas in the face of climate change and its challenges.